


On the Perils of the Modern Office

by shinealightonme



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-29
Updated: 2008-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elle decides to try life like a normal person.  That works about as well as you expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Perils of the Modern Office

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on LJ](http://shinealightonme.livejournal.com/1459.html).

It was a quiet day; something that had once been a bit of a rarity where Elle Bishop was concerned, but was becoming more and more common as of late.

Now that she had parted ways with The Company, she'd had little choice but to end up at – well, the company. Without any family to rely on nor anyone who could properly be addressed as a 'friend,' Elle had had to take on the hardest mission of her life – getting a real job.

It was quiet in her cubicle, because they weren't allowed to play music except on alternating Fridays from 11:00 to 1:30. Elle hadn't held her current position long enough to have experienced those blessed two-and-a-half hours of auditory freedom, but she was suspecting that, like everything else in the 'real' world, it was going to be overrated. She was fairly certain that the guy in the next cubicle listened to country.

Although a bit of music might have been helpful at that moment. How could the sound of typing be so damn annoying? Not that she was doing much typing, exactly, because Tetris really only required a few keys, but her neighbors would not stop pounding away at their keyboards like they actually cared, or something.

Someone behind her whistled in that, 'come here puppy, that's a good girl' kind of way that was somehow more demeaning than the ordinary sexual advances kind of way. "Hey, Elle," the blonde gnashed her teeth to hear that voice calling her name, because she just knew what that meant. Still, she forced a smile; it wasn't very convincing, but her boss hadn't noticed yet.

"Yes, Mr. Blutowski?" she asked formally, though it pained her.

"We've got a bit of a problem," he said, making quote gestures with his fingers on the word 'problem.' "It seems that you never filed the paperwork from Mrs. Hall's claim last week."

"Mr. Blutowski, I swear, I filed that paperwork with Ron in Accounting," Elle lied smoothly. Her boss actually believed her, because he nodded and said, "Sorry about the mix-up, kiddo," and flashed her one of those 'I'm shooting you with my pointer finger, because I'm a dumbass' hand gestures.

Elle figured that she had maybe ten minutes before he caught on, although she didn't want to overestimate his intelligence so she changed it to twenty. Plenty of time to grin over the thought of shooting Blutowski a hand gesture of her own, one more expressive of her emotions, and to get herself some coffee.

Of course, once she'd helped herself to some coffee, there was nothing else to do but sit back in her computer chair and wait for the other shoe to drop. Well, she could have done some of her work, but she wasn't quite bored enough yet to stoop to that.

She'd been sitting at her desk – again – for about four minutes before she decided that she wasn't really that thirsty after all, she was hungry. She went back to the break room and shoved a vaguely-disgusting-but-still-slightly-edible package of Easy Mac into the microwave.

She would have been content to stand there and watch it circle around pathetically, except just then two of her coworkers – who, despite being female, blonde, and roughly the same age as her, did not appear to have enough in common with Elle to be in the same phylum of being, let alone species – burst in and started gossiping about how one of them had just gotten asked out on a date by some ohmygodsoridiculouslyfineguy. Clenching her teeth hard enough that she could hear them grinding away – this job was going to give her huge dental bills, if nothing else – she stormed out. They took little notice of her, even as she pushed past them, except to comment briefly on that weird shock they'd just received, and yeah, static electricity didn't usually hurt that much, it must be the weather, and anyway.

She back in her cubicle the next time Blutowski bothered her. It had, in fact, taken him twenty-three minutes to figure out that she'd lied to him, and he hadn't actually figured out the lying part yet.

"Now, Elle, I understand that a lot of the rules seem 'lame' and 'silly,' but they're there for a reason," he lectured her, completely oblivious to the fact that her actions were calculated and spiteful, rather than simple human error. "We wouldn't want anymore important paperwork to get lost, now, would we?"

"No, Mr. Blutowski," she smiled charmingly, imagining how he would sound if she zapped him – nothing lethal, just cripplingly painful.

"Just make sure you follow all the guidelines next time, okay? The rules can be your friend."

"Of course, Mr. Blutowski," she nodded, and the second he was gone, she stomped out of her cubicle and back into the break room, which would have been a much more satisfying move if anyone had actually noticed. Elle Bishop wasn't used to being ignored, and coming on top of everything else, it was a bit much to handle.

So now she was back in the break room, and if she'd spent more time in there today than she had in her cubicle, it was her boss's fault for being so irritating in the first place.

The two dolts from before were still in there, giggling in a way that was somehow reminiscent of nails on a chalkboard, and she realized she'd completely forgotten about her Easy Mac. It had gotten cold and the cheese part had cooled and now looked more like hardening concrete, except of a distressingly orange color.

"Dammit!" she yelled, slamming the microwave door shut again.

"Whoa, careful there buddy," and apparently Blutowski had found here her, too, robbing her of the chance for even the smallest moment of peace with her (admittedly disgusting) lunch. "We wouldn't want anything to break, now would we?"

She snapped; later, reflecting on the whole situation, she wouldn't believe she had lasted as long as she did. "No! That is exactly what I want!" she shouted, and proceeded to send lightning bolts at the microwave, the fridge, the lights above her, the computer in the nearest cubicle, and every other electrical object in sight. "Damn you all and damn this office! I'm might be crazy, but I'm not crazy enough to deal with this shit!"

Once again a free woman, Elle Bishop strode out of the singed remains of her office building, never to be seen by any of its occupants again.

When the small fires around the building had all been extinguished and the employees were leaving for an unexpected vacation, Mr. Blutowski called his supervisor. "I'm going to send out a memo about not plugging too many appliances in at one time," he sighed in mild disappointment. "And I think we'll have to fire Miss Bishop. It's a shame; she was starting to fit in so well here."


End file.
